A dream is a wake-up call. It takes us beyond what we already know. Dreams are the language of the soul, and they are experiences of the soul.

There are “big” dreams and “little” dreams, of course. In big dreams, we go traveling and we may receive visitations. We travel across time – into the future and the past – and we travel to other dimensions of reality. This is reflected in the words for “dream” that are used by indigenous people who have retained strong dreaming traditions and respect for dreamers. Among the Makiritare, a shamanic dreaming people of Venezuela, for example, the word for dream is adekato, which means “a journey of the soul”.

Most societies have valued dreams and dreamers for three main reasons. First, they have looked to dreams for contact with a wiser source than the everyday mind – call that God, or Nature, or the Self. Second, they have looked to dreams as part of our survival kit, giving us clues to possible future events we may want to avoid or enact. Third, they have known that dreaming is medicine, in several important senses. Dreams show us what is going on inside the body, often before physical symptoms present. Continue reading →

Intuitive and ever curious, Scorpios are the great investigators of the Zodiac. They want to know everything about everyone. When an answer is needed, a Scorpio will find it for you. Unfortunately Scorpios seem to see only in black and white. They always have their own agenda and never fail to promote it.

Scorpios are the masters of their fate. They know only one way to live: on their own terms. They do not live life but attack it. When life hands them a loss, they do not waste time sulking, but rather continue on their path, sure they will eventually succeed. Scorpios are driven by their intense passions and desires. Often they are seen as imperious. Continue reading →

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The vitality coursing along the nerves must not be confused with what we usually call the magnetism of the man – his own nerve-fluid, specialized within the spine, and composed of the primary life-force intermingled with the kundalini. It is this fluid which keeps up the constant circulation of etheric matter along the nerves, corresponding to the circulation of blood through the arteries and veins; and as oxygen is conveyed by the blood to all parts of the body, so vitality is conveyed along the nerves by this etheric current. The particles of the etheric part of man’s body are constantly changing, just as are those of the denser part; along with the food which we eat and the air which we breathe we take in etheric matter, and this is assimilated by the etheric part of the body. Etheric matter is constantly being thrown off from the pores, just as is gaseous matter, so that when two persons are close together each necessarily absorbs much of the physical emanations of the other. Continue reading →

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Metaphorically, we may be drawn into Hades through the caves and empty places formed from our depression or despair. Grief and loss of meaning in our lives may also draw us into the Underworld. Or we may descend through a chasm that has been opened by a volcanic blast of buried feeling. Emotional catharsis may leave a dark hole through which we now must enter the Underworld to encounter soul, as in Jung’s experience. At critical transitions in the life cycle, when we need to relinquish one stage of life to enter another, we often find ourselves standing at one of the entrances to Hades. The most potent of these times is on the threshold of “midlife.” […] Continue reading →

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In Greek myth, Hades is not only the personification of the Underworld god Pluto, but also refers to his extensive Underworld kingdom. Mythological tradition and epic clearly differentiate the Underworld and the god Hades, who is regent of this place. The topography and atmosphere of this mythological nether world is symbolic of the sphere we are drawn into during a transit of Pluto and provides a context for the textures and shades of subterranean feelings experienced during this time.

Descent into the Underworld, or catabasis, is a common motif in myth, and this journey is undertaken for a variety of reasons. The journey to the Underworld crosses the crucial threshold between this world Continue reading →

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When I try to conjure up an image of the idea most threatening to our culture, a very Plutonian image arises: that of a naked voodoo priestess writhing in ecstasy while the blood of the headless chicken in her hands flows down her sweaty, chocolate skin. This image does not play well on Main Street. Yet, here we have passion, ritual, death, blood, and an undulating feminine body all in one. Pluto is at home here – totally and uncompromisingly. And need I tell you that we all have Pluto in our charts? We all express the archetypal voodoo priestess somewhere. […] Our internal pantheon includes Kali, Lilith and Sekhmet, goddesses with a fierce, frightening, and sometimes ruthless aspect. Each planet must speak through us in its own voice.

Pluto energy appears not only as horror, destruction, and titillation. The yin aspect is also nurturing and receptive. Expressed this way, Pluto is also a bowl – a creative, dark place. The gardener who frets about destructive underground roots also delights in truffles and mushrooms, treasures from the deep, moist earth. Pluto is also a womb – a Continue reading →

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If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid
My angels will take flight as well.
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Pluto’s History

In a monastery in medieval Europe, an upstart monk was misbehaving. “How do we know that all the words we are copying over and over again in these texts are accurate?” he asked. “If a monk made a mistake 200 years ago, we’d still be copying that same mistake, no?” The abbot reluctantly agreed with the smart aleck and promised all the monks that, on the morrow, he would compare their work with the original texts that were kept deep in the vaults below the monastery. The next day, as the abbot descended into the forbidden, stony depths, all the monks gathered excitedly at the top of the stairs. After what seemed like an eternity, they heard a woeful cry of agony from below. The abbot emerged, clutching his head with both hands, and exclaimed: “The word is celibrate!“

For about a thousand years, before the Reformation, the Catholic Church controlled the Western world, alongside various noblemen who came and went. The above joke illustrates the twisting that occurred Continue reading →